« First of all, the effectiveness of writing cure underlines the obvious: to digest a painful experience, one must first recognize and accept it, to then be able to tell or write it... This is why denial and "emotional retention" have such a high cost in terms of damage to health, physical or moral. Then, the setting in words and narrative increases the coherence of events and moods that would otherwise have a taste of unfinished business. And the unfinished is psychotoxic, few of us are able to feel good with closed emotional files "untuged" (see the Zeigarnik effect we talked about earlier). Indeed, studies that compare talking, writing or simply thinking about painful life experiences clearly show that both writing and discussion do much better than solitary reflection. Why is "simple" thinking often so unsyered? Because it skids very quickly towards rumination! While it is much more difficult to ruminate in writing: the absurdity and toxicity of the mechanism would be obvious to us, while we tolerate it in our minds... »

« Pain spontaneously pushes us to cut ourselves off from the world and focus on ourselves, leaving even more room in our minds for suffering. And suffering gradually becomes a rumination of pain, a tireless return to it. »

« A pain is always too much. And everything that avoids pain must be done, whenever possible: remove the pebble from the shoe, take an analgesic for toothache, morphine for metastases. Pain does not have to be borne if it can be resolved: attenuated or better, removed. The pain doesn't grow, it lowers. It does not enrich, it shrinks and impoverishes. It is an alienation from the world around us, it imprisons us within ourselves. Fighting pain consumes all our energy. We'd have better things to do. Pain demolishes, weakens rather than strengthens. »